


Night

by Goatfish



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Hitori, Gen, Insomnia, Introspection, Slice of Life, Strange Imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goatfish/pseuds/Goatfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun is a coward. When it sets, it leaves half of the world alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all,  
> Here's a shamelessly indulgent drabble that's more of an attempt to get my angst writing muscles working again from a block I hit. There's never enough painful Nageki and Hitori antics so have some.  
> -edit- adding more because these birds are ruining my life in the best way possible. Follows the timeline loosely.  
> 

  **Night**

 

Night. The most unfair time that plagues the course of 24 hours. Across the globe, through ages long since gone and into years not yet imagined, there has been the fear of night. The lurking apprehension as darkness falls, suffocating the world’s desperate cries for mercy. A black rag stuffed gracelessly into the heaving mouth of a hostage, a blindfold before the firing squad. During the sunless hours, events of the day flitter past like dying fairies against a frosted pane of glass. Ethereal, spectral, and ultimately grotesque.

This is what he thought, at least. The dusk-feathered, slender quail sprawled on the top mattress of a rickety bunk bed. When last he looked, the peeping neon numbers of the clock next to the bed had read: 2:49am. They read like an epitaph, mourning the lost respite from the clutches of nighttime. He had not slept at all, and generally speaking, hadn’t slept well in months. Hitori Uzune desperately wanted to sleep, to fall into the gentle arms of vacancy lined by oblivion. It would have been wonderful as a relief from the constant worries that churned in his mind.

The worries congealed into a single form which, consequently, lay on the bed below him. As the sole survivors of the Hatoful House, he and his brother Nageki, lived in a small apartment together. The orphanage was too large for them alone, and with memories that clung like dank cobwebs in every corner, they could not bear the emptiness. This was how they lived now, he would go to as many jobs as he could cram into the limited time the day had to offer, and his little brother would stay home and read.

Nageki was never a healthy child, this trait followed him as he matured, the common cold had the potential to render him dangerously close to death. Because of this, school -a festering ground for illness and hazards- was not an option. Neither was work. Which left him rather pigeonholed into staying at home, reading, cleaning (provided he had the energy) and doing tasks that did not require a large amount of exertion.

A red, woolen scarf hung from a hook next to the door. While trying to find tasks that occupied his time, Nageki once took up knitting and before the eventual boredom of it, he had taken it upon himself to make Hitori something he could use for when it got cold. Money has always been an issue, with the time he had fractured and divided between jobs, shopping for items such as scarves was a luxury he never had. Feeling pleased lasted for a few, rare hours for Nageki, and he enjoyed it while he could. His brother made a point of wearing the scarf as often as possible, on the off chance that it would bring Nageki some small amount of pride.

Hitori gazed at the scarf fondly from his position on the bed, if it made his brother feel like less of a burden, then he would wear it to his grave. He would be tired by the time morning knelled in saccharine chimes. At work, maybe he would be clumsy or accidentally fall asleep again. Maybe he’d get the orders wrong at his second job and have screaming old ladies throwing a tantrum because he put the milk in before the sugar, or because the water for the coffee was three degrees cooler than what they ordered. Maybe he’d get fired and have to find another equally demeaning minimum wage job or have to work overtime at the local school as a math tutor. None of this mattered to him, however.

As long as he could keep his brother fed, clothed, and relatively happy, he proudly dealt with as much abuse as the customers, or his boss, could throw at him.

On the thin mattress below him, a sound caught his attention and drew him out of the introspective hub that he had been lured into. He knew what it was, but all the same, fervently wished that it wasn’t what he thought. Yet alas, it was.

Nageki moaned fitfully in his sleep, a quiet protest to the contents of the dream that afflicted him. His brother knew what it would be about, for how could it be about anything else? Seeing the patchwork family the orphanage had held _murdered_ before you, shot and killed one by one, the cries and broken pleads leaking into the air from the children put down like animals, is something that… would never leave. Hitori himself wasn’t there to witness it, but he could imagine the horror, the pain, the fear and the helplessness that his brother must have felt. And he hated it. He hated that he wasn’t present for their family when they needed him most, that he wasn’t there for Nageki and the others. The aftermath, the blood and the cadavers, was bad enough.

Not even in slumber could Nageki escape the tortures that seemed to follow him.

Closing his eyes tightly, Hitori prayed in quiet hope to whatever may or may not be listening, to just let his brother sleep in peace. Hadn’t he been through enough without the specters that the subconscious forces on him? Hadn’t they both been through enough trials to, for one night even, sleep without agony and torment?

The universe held its tongue in reply. Silence came as the belligerent retort, Hitori found himself hating the forces that be, with cold, unimpressed disdain. _So this is your great mercy, God. Why, am I not surprised._ It was not a question, but a statement. A statement of scornful reproach to what he assumed either did not care, or was not present. Regardless, it was not a force to be revered and cherished.

“…no. P-please…” a timid whisper said, emanating from the fragile dove tangled in bed sheets and nightmares.

Hitori opened his eyes, staring up at the dull, white ceiling, mentally soothing the distraught figure on the bed below. He had tried to shake him from a nightmare once, presumably the same nightmare, only to have Nageki remorsefully apologize for waking him up, and a feeble promise to not to let it happen again. He assured his brother that it didn’t bother him, but he would hear nothing of it and regretted for the umpteenth time that he was nothing more than a burden.

Oh how he hated this. Having to bear the last remnant of family writhing in uneasy sleep, while he could only guess and devise the horrors of his dream. Begging for his life, and the life of everyone else, feeling helpless. Gladly, he would switch their places so it would be _his_ lanky body tossed around in a fictional world of half remembered violence and maybe then Nageki would be able to sleep. While hearing and silently suffering the shade of his younger brother’s pain hurt, it would be nothing to what he himself was going through now. Caught in dreams like a rabbit in a trap, wild eyed and bucking.

The voice faltered out into a disturbed mumbling instead of the frantic whispering it had been. Once more hoping that he was wrong, Hitori held his breath in anticipation for what followed. It was quiet. Quiet, quiet and loathsome. Any moment now…

Nageki sat bold upright with a strangled gasp, panting as if he had been running for his very life.

There was a pause. Hitori made a deliberate effort to yawn in fake sleepiness and regulate his breathing. He made a decent impression of being unconscious, hoping that the startled bird on the bottom bunk would think him asleep. Seconds passed in slow, nerve-wracking tedium. Finally, Nageki let out a sharp sigh. Whether from the lung congestion that always lingered in the background or from the way it caught in his throat, he was not sure, but it sounded completely wrong.

The dark room was saturated by this accursed night, making the shadows that draped along the wall in a restless manner, mock and jeer their torments with twisting spirals of inky black and grey. Night was ruthless and cruel, spiteful and malevolent, how he hated it –he hated it, he hated it-

Then he heard it, the noise worse than gunshots and explosions, worse than the roar of a train derailing and worse than a wooden roof’s protest under too much strain. It was a soft, shuddering breath followed by the muffled sound of a sob stifled under blankets and pillows. Nageki tried so hard to keep from dissolving into tears, but as the figments of the dream trickled like acid back into his memory, he could not help it. Hitori knew that his brother was being as quiet as he could, not wanting to wake the supposedly sleeping quail above.

Picturing the younger mourning dove, shoulders shaking with suppressed sadness, feeling guilty for crying made Hitori want to curl into a ball and cease to be. He stiffened, fighting every urge to leap from the bed and take his little brother into his wings and tell him that everything was going to be fine, and that they were okay now, and that he would fix it all. But Nageki hated being pitied and hated to seem as if he were causing Hitori distress, so it would make the situation worse. But oh _God_ did he want to. Every fiber in his being wanted to.

He laid there in bed, looking up at the ceiling without seeing, feeling his heart break into innumerable shards at the sound of his only family going to pieces a few feet away. After a while, Nageki had fallen asleep and this time was free of troubling dreams. He risked a look at the clock again with weary eyes, it read 3:53am. In an hour and a half, he would have to get up and go to work for the remainder of the day. So he could come home, only to listen to the same heart-wrenching phenomenon again and wonder, not for the last time, why this had happened to them, and what they could have possibly done to deserve this.

 

* * *

 

  **Dawn**

 

What good does morning do, when it brings nothing but stale reminders of the husky shell of stars and moonlight? This wretched yellow-peach tinted interruption crept through the window in a lurching and repulsive way, soaking the dark curtains around the window with asinine glow. _Cheerful_ is the term that many birds used to describe the waking hours, _positive._ _Optimistic._ What absolute lies in the mouths of those who know nothing of life. Life is not passive, or benevolent. It is a calloused, wrathful mistress who delights in the carnal pleasures of dragging onyx claws through the hearts and souls of good people. People, who did nothing wrong, except for the grand misfortune of happening to be born on the crust of the earth.

He hated the morning with renewed passion, a frenzy of woe directed towards a target undeserving of the vile things he spewed at it. The night was frightful and whispered with gasping howls in demon sent hours, but the morning…

The morning was worse. For while nights carapace heralded on high of tragedy that _they_ had suffered, that _he_ had suffered –this accursed morn- was remorseless in its inane cackles, which would set a hyena to their wits end. Does silence cuff at the ears worse than cloying and blatantly insulting frivolity? He did not know.

At night, he had grieved for them, for _him._ But when morning arrived in perverse adornments, when he looked around with grief framed eyes, guilt resting under them in layers of darkened crescents, he was alone. Alone, in every perceivable definition of the word. It was then that he truly broke beneath the knife of sadistic catastrophe.

Hitori was never the same after that. Days were drawn out, as a prison sentence, to wait in one’s cell with a direct view of the gallows. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was a prison. This life, this ruinous and misbegotten excuse for a living, breathing form. This deplorable condition that he was forced to accept, to falsely pretend it to be a joyous thing, was a sentence that he was alone to bear. Yet that was alright… he would bear it.

After all, it was through his actions that he was alone. Through his own foolishness and childish indiscretion, he had allowed himself to become blinded to the truth. The realism that life is not kind and certainly not forgiving. During the longest mornings, immediately after he became the sole survivor of the orphanage, he attempted to rectify his actions with rationalizations.

_They said they’d be looking for a cure._

_They said they’d help him, try to fix his illness._

_How was I to know…how could I have known their intentions?_

Ultimately, these entreating cries at the logical sector of his mind were for naught, as it condensed into one that he assigned himself.

_It was my fault… I did this._

_I am to blame, for all of it._

_I can never be redeemed._

The constricting tendrils of self-hatred wrap their wicked bonds around many. Whatever pain he felt, whatever injustices occurred due to his actions, and their consequences, Hitori felt he deserved them. What’s worse is that, after a point, there does not ever seem to have been a beginning to it, or an end, but a constant state of limbo that guffaws at the label of purgatory in black humor. It is an all-consuming furor that impairs memories by obscuring them, rewrites experiences in a dour light, and shades any potential happiness that could occur. There is no escaping it.

There was nothing before it, and there will be nothing after it. And in the early months, his senses came to the conclusion his heart and mind quaked at; to die would be a gift. He didn’t deserve such a gift.

At his tutoring job, the faculty and management were unaware of what transpired within him. Hitori appeared for all the world to be the same, honest, smart, caring quail they had come to know and expect. He responded when students asked a question, or tried to make small talk. He wished them a good day when they left. He would politely and civilly speak with the other tutors regarding grading issues and teaching techniques.

It was an illusion, a chameleon’s suit.

For he had grown into a state of carelessness, yet not of the free spirited variety. This apathy that blossomed inside him like a cancerous growth made him cease caring about many things, about most things. Birds were easily fooled, content to take the painted smile at face value and not question its sincerity. If they were concerned, it did not surface. Nor did he expect them to be concerned.

Morning scattered the ghoulish, gibbous tones that collected over the duration of the evening. The words that coalesced in a familiar voice, taut with mangled accusation and begging, begging for him to --  
          

           _Come and get me_. _Why did you leave me? You don’t know what they did to me. Please. I want to go home. Please, I just want to go home. Come and get me, please. You left me here, why did you leave me? It was terrible and you left me here and I just want to go home and why didn’t you save me and come and get me- come and get me- come and get me- Hitori, I’m scared.  
          _

\--and he would, he swore on every beat of his pulse and straggling inhalation that he would. He would come and rescue him, one day, one day, little brother. Wait for me, I’ll come for you. Yes, I know, I know, I deserve it. I swear I will. I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, sorry. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it, and we can go home, together. I promise, together. Nageki, I- oh god- I _miss you so much._

 

One day, he walked into a mass of blond feathers and stuttered apologies.

He smiled and wished it a good afternoon, apologizing himself for his clumsiness.

Hitori caught the fainted touch of a blush in its cheeks as it looked up.

It stumbled, casting nervous amber eyes away in embarrassment, drawing what appeared to be a shawl or blanket, draped around its neck closer.

He patted its downy shoulder in a comforting and friendly fashion, giving an understanding look that flickered on the edge of pity.

The feeling of timorous expectancy filled the space around them, confusing Hitori for a moment before words spilled out of it.

“ ‘m sorry…should’ve just stay’d h-home.” It whispered, more to itself than to him.

Taking on his caretaker voice, a soft, calm tone, he asked, “Hey, you doing okay? Is something wrong?” What was he imitating again? Concern?

He had forgotten how excellent he was at mimicking things he no longer cared about, so he listened in faux attentiveness as it haltingly complained and dumped all its woes at the feet of a stranger. Once it had finished, it appeared to be almost in tears.

“S-sorry…” It apologized again, blinking wearily. “…didn’t mean t’ bother you…”

Hitori laughed, wondering how anyone could have believed it to be genuine. “It’s fine.” Telescoping his wing, he smiled once more, “Hitori Uzune.”

“Kazuaki Nanaki.” The light-colored quail replied, tentatively shaking the extended limb. It was a shock of opposite colors and characters.

And somewhere in the back of his skull, hiding under a cardboard smile, an idea began to grow roots.

 

* * *

 

**Dusk**

 

It was the little details, small ones, that he hardly realized were missing that he now missed the most. For a sizable expanse of time, he had become accustomed to the library, its shelves and corners, dusty tomes and stagnant air, worn carpet and empty desks. The amount of time to his penance was somewhat beyond his grasp. This was where he was now, his domain and his cage. These sheets of paper and ink were familiar, comforting. Like the sheets of a bed that he could submerge himself in until woken by some unfortunate distraction. The words and writing became home.

A crimson and purple fringe edged on the horizon, the sky appearing bruised. Several wispy clouds lined the heavens, catching and soaking up the colors, turning brilliant hues of orange, yellow and even pink. Soon, night would nestle in and the world outside would be blanketed with slumber. He looked out the window, eyes reflecting back at the expanses of dusk passively. Then he returned his attention to his domain, the library. The halogen lights overhead had been turned out for the evening, as students and faculty alike marched home to their families, their lives, and their dreams. To what they loved.

Once, the desolation of his apparent imprisonment here would have made a ripple of pain shoot through him. A dagger of crippling loneliness and despair, torn through the very core. But now, time had smothered the wound. As with so many things, he could not recall the pain of being alone. It simply was. He was here, in the company of literature and faulty air conditioning. That is all there was to it. Soon, Nageki knew his consciousness would fail. He would pass out, only to wake up the next morning in the same place. Sitting next to the silent cooling unit, he used the fading glow of the sunset to read a few lines of his book. Yet currently, it did not hold his interest.

With the encroaching night, a loud sound outside startled him. He flinched reflexively, not knowing why a resounding crack and rumbling boom caused such a reaction. Something in the foggy halls of memory flickered, but only for a moment. It had left as quickly as it surfaced. Whatever it had been was absent now. Nageki noticed motion from outside of the library’s window, a brief and bright flash. Gold sparkled, crackling, then dissolved. Green, spread into a smear across the sky, before it drooped like a carnation’s petals. Each introduction of a color and splattering of light across the sky was announced by an explosion, followed by a cheer of voices from below.

Fireworks.

Nageki closed his book, marking the page by folding a corner slightly, then faced the window, standing. Different shapes of people pelted the outside, making the outlines of individuals hard to determine. The crowd whooped and applauded as an impressive swatch of green and blue explosives lit up the sky. To see these unknown people lost in the simplicity of the moment, stoked a tiny ember of what he thought was lost. In the embers feeble presence, he finally found what the word was. Joy. Fueled by this warmth, a gentle smile tugged at his somber features.

Reaching out, he placed a wing against the window’s surface. Absently caressing the glass, Nageki’s expression grew dim. He realized that he could not feel the smooth, cold surface beneath the feathers. He recognized that the window was there, but the clear pane held no sensations for him. Just a solid representation of his inability to leave. Nageki let his wing drop to his side.

He thought of the wind just outside, the soft movement of it stirring and pulling at clothes. He thought of the leaves that would soon be falling from the trees, how they give a sharp, earthy crunch under the heel. He thought of how the air carries the fresh scent of rain, long before it reaches the ground. And now, more than anything else, he thought how he dearly missed those seemingly meaningless details. Nageki glanced at the books on the shelves, fragile bindings, loose pages, and yellowing paper. They described in great detail each event that he could not experience. With elaborate words filling the mind, he could live and feel.

They were suggestions of a sensation. Alluding to and framing with eloquence and allegories, however, they couldn’t sate the aching want he harbored. The library distorted, wobbling around him. Nageki felt lightheaded and knew what was about to proceed. He returned to his perch beside the metal unit, closing wings around his thin body in a protective shielding. Exhaustion was settling in, he could feel his consciousness ebbing away like the tide. A magnificent showcase of gold, red and green dominated the sky, even going so far as to light some of the library.

Finally, as awareness fled from him, an eruption of celebration came from the people standing in the viewing area. He didn’t like being in crowds, they made him uncomfortable. All the same, he wanted to watch the fireworks flash and burn with everyone else, and enjoy the precious details of dusk.

**Author's Note:**

> -Love and apologies, Goatfish.


End file.
